People of Israel Punished for Worshipping False Gods (c.1478) from The Koberger Bible, Nuremberg

This woodcut illustrated Exodus 32 in the first German Bible printed in Nuremberg by Anton Koberger, but that was not the first time it was used. It was originally made for a German Bible printed in Cologne about five years earlier. Koberger saw no reason to reinvent the wheel; not only did he source used woodblooks, but he also copied the text from another Bible printed in Augsburg in 1475. He offered the Bible in three versions: uncolored, colored with just three colors, or-as here-fully colored with a palette of six or more colors. In this example, God's halo and the angel's sword also received a now-tarnished application of metal leaf.